The Nativity

Vos was the leading history painter in Antwerp in the late 16th century. In his work the increasingly dry conventions of the school’s Mannerist painters were transformed by the dynamic compositions and saturated color that he had gathered from his early training in Italy, and especially from the Venetians. With their clear narration and incipient naturalism, his altarpieces dominated artistic production for the Counter-Reformation in the South Netherlands. This draw-ing is closely related to a late altarpiece in Antwerp’s Koninklijk Museum, although its variations in the background, cautious finish, and monogram suggest less a preparatory study than a model for an alternative project or possibly an engraving.